


Advanced Feeling Worthless

by queenofspades (enlightenight)



Series: Community After The Episodes Series [6]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e11 G.I. Jeff, Gen, tw: domestic violence mention, tw: rape/abuse mention, tw: suicidal themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-26
Updated: 2014-04-26
Packaged: 2018-01-20 22:08:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1527422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enlightenight/pseuds/queenofspades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Greendale Seven, now five, deals with the psychological consequences of staying in school one more year and the stakes are so high even Jeff can't talk his way out of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Advanced Feeling Worthless

**Author's Note:**

> I have decided the fifth season missed so many opportunities on exploring the characters' darker shades, I wanted to start a fic. Hope you like it - feedback is appreciated.

The name on his door meant him nothing, his name was on a more luxurious door before - now it seemed like the memories of his lawyer life belonged to a life that wasn't his because he wasn't that perfect man anymore. 

A failure, he thought. A king to a beggar. A man with zero options. Nothing more. 

The slight knock on his door was unusual, here, at Greendale, nobody would knock - nobody would respect him enough to knock, at least. On his fortieth birthday, he just piled the scotch bottle and wallet to a drawer and cleared his throat: "Yeah?"

He saw the blonde curly hair, which was the trademark of this young woman who had enough courtesy to knock a door before bursting in, first. 

"Are you busy?" Britta Perry of all asked. "If you are -"  
"No, I am not," he shook his head as if he was clearing the thoughts. "Did something happen?"

Britta walked in hesitantly and shrugged after sitting on the only chair in front of Jeff's desk. "You haven't been around all day," she replied. "I wanted to see if you are okay."

"Yes, I am - why wouldn't I be?" He cursed himself for answering so damn quickly, anyone - especially someone like Britta, who knew him very well - would've understood he was not even close to be fine. "It's just a boring day and honestly, I am not up to joining Abed's Police Justice talk - he started to give me a headache lately." Even himself couldn't believe what he said, she was going to definitely shame him for that, he was becoming that bad person again but with less things in his hands-  
"Yeah, he's been kind of obsessed with that," Britta sighed instead, surprising Jeff to his core. "It's his own way with Troy's departure, so I tend to not say something offensive when he is around - I know, I am a bad person."

He just shook his head, without a light in his eyes. "Is that all?" he asked trying to avoid sounding rude. "I need tons of papers to grade and-"  
"Oh, of course-" Britta got up immediately, her apologetic look was there again, Jeff hated seeing it - he didn't know why. Maybe it was because he had far worse things to be apologetic for but he never was, and there she was acting like she was the only reason if anyone had any problem. 

"See you around," he managed to smile.  
"See you, good luck with the papers," she said and walked out of the office, closing the door behind her. 

Jeff reached to his jacket and got the pills out of its pocket. Why the hell did he go go Korean market? He didn't remember. But being young again? He was in for it. 

He took the scotch, a forty year old Glencallan - he knew it worthed almost a thousand dollars, which was more than the amount he had in his savings account - and opened it. 

"Cheers," he said joylessly drowning the pills with the bitter taste of quality scotch.

*

Britta grabbed her Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences - ninth edition and it was a brilliant second hand one -book from her locker and checked one more time if she got the right notebook with her as she heard someone saying her name.

"Yeah?" She returned to the boy in a defensive mode, trying to remember who he was. Conley, Conrad, Conan? What was his name..?

"I was going to ask if you have the cognitive neuroscience notes," he said. "And if you have, can I copy them?"

Britta looked at him blankly for a few seconds, he was clearly younger than she was but she could see the same passion she had when she was in his age. 

"Yes - hold on."

She opened her locker again while holding her books with one hand before the boy, Connor, she remembered, offered to hold the book for her. 

"Thank you," she breathed giving it to him and finally managing opening the locker. 

She went through one of her red notebooks and smiled at her success for finding the correct one at first trial. 

"Here you go - but please bring it before next class, will you?"  
"Promise - you are a lifesaver Britta!"

She took her book back from him and smiled his compliment as he hugged the notebook and ran through the hallway. Britta locked the locker again and walked to her class, she always hated math related things. 

She directly went to the back rows, found a corner seat, best place for being invisible. She wanted to go and see a therapist for sure this time but that little, cold fear of the therapist calling her the worst stopped her again. 

Sweating coldly, she hoped nobody noticed that, not that people tended to notice her - ironically Jeff Winger was the only exception - but she wished she wasn't that invisible. 

When she wasn't invisible, people would see her failures. Like that math teacher in high school, she had wanted to answer a question but she had also given a wrong answer which was unacceptable. He had yelled at her for being such an idiot - how he could teach something to such an incompetent kid?

She breathed deeply, trying to shoo this degrading thoughts out of her mind but it was useless. 

She wished she could have been more successful at high school. Maybe then she wouldn't have had to drop it. Or her parents would have taken her more seriously. 

"It is always that man in the dinosaur costume!" Her mother had shouted at her one day, looking at an F she had gotten from math. "When you fail at something, the subject somehow comes to your imaginative harasser!" 

He wasn't imaginative, she had thought. "And he wasn't a harasser, he was a child abuser who got caught two weeks after my eleventh birthday for doing it to another kid." She couldn't have told them back then that it was him. She still hated herself for this fact. 

"Greendale have ruined us all," Jeff had said once. She wiped her teary eyes and thought maybe he was actually right. 

But she was a ruin even before she came to Greendale.

**Author's Note:**

> The names of Britta's courses and books are directly taken from my own university's course catalogue for Psychology.


End file.
